Love Letters to Parents

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We are grateful that the Today Show chose to highlight SLOHS’s REACH Club this morning as being one of the many groups working on positive solutions to the issues they face (stress, anxiety and depression, social pressure, feeling included and managing isolation, etc.). Stressed-out teens: Schools take new approaches to avert tragedy.

All across the country, we saw kindness being displayed in many forms this week. As campuses came together, students, teachers, school staff and community members honored, spoke up, and advocated for change. The messages shared were not just about guns and legislation. Underlying speakers’ words were messages about coming and acting together, looking out for each other, showing and raising awareness for mental health needs, and wanting to change conversations about the issues of our day.

We’ve been thinking about a lot. We’ve been fortunate that many others are thinking and writing about the state of humanity and the changing roles, attitudes, understandings, and perceptions about what it means to be a woman or man today.

This weeks Love Letter 2 Parents: What does it mean to be a warrior?

A warrior isn’t necessarily someone who is fighting a physical battle with brute strength, swords and metal armor. A warrior can be someone who fights emotional battles and conquers them using their intrinsic power. Our social and emotional defenses can be stronger than our suit of armor or physical strength. There are days and situations that require us to summon our inner warrior. Each and everyone of us is fighting a battle or set of battles. Some may be hidden deep within our archives of the past and others may be out in the open for all to see. overbearing on our everyday lives. It may be a friend’s pain of losing a child, maybe a partner’s/spouse’s shame over a hidden past, maybe a wrong you witnessed but didn’t speak up to, or maybe it’s fighting a battle unknown, a battle you feel compelled to fight that is unnamed.

We have read plenty about how today’s teenagers are plagued by more distress (anxiety, stress and depression) than any generation on record. As adults, we know to put our oxygen masks on first and to practice self-care. “Self-love” is what we’re calling it in our homes.

Every airplane ride begins with a very important plea- when the oxygen masks are released from above, place yours on first, before putting one on your child. The first time we flew as parents, the oxygen mask instructions took on a whole new meaning. How could we think of protecting ourselves before our beautiful children?

The heart pumps blood to itself first before it can take care of the other organs in the body because that is what it needs to do to survive. As busy parents, we need to remind ourselves that practicing self-care is not the same as being selfish. Self-care is essential to our quality of life! She talked about mindfulness, neuroplasticity, and positive coping skills as tools for relieving, managing, and preventing stress. Most importantly, she reminded us to care for ourselves, in the ways that we care for our family and friends. And, when we trip and fall, what will we say to ourselves as we get back up?

"School seems to be a lot easier for an extrovert. Walking around campus and saying hi to people, participating in class seems to come natural for someone like an extrovert. Introverts have to work very hard at putting themselves out there. The extrovert doesn’t have to think too hard to raise their hand or say hello to someone they don’t know well. Also, something I never really thought about was how hard I have to work to be different than what I’m naturally comfortable with. It’s good to learn to put myself out there, pat myself on the back for trying, and maybe help others be aware that we’re all doing our best." —Anonymous High School Student

This Weeks Love Letter 2 Parents Speaking the Words to Open the Door We can’t tell you how many times we’ve felt like our feet landed in our mouths while trying to connect and have conversations with our kids. The irony is that, each time, we were working hard to formulate every word and convey our desires to connect. Yet, despite our good intentions, our attempts still backfired.

This weeks Love Letter 2 Parents: Living, Learning and Parenting with Courage & Strength Monday’s MLK, Jr. holiday gave us time to reflect on Martin Luther King Jr.’s teachings on respect, empathy and love. In today’s 24-hour news feeds, our kids are exposed to disturbing events, diverse perspectives and different attitudes- things that our parents could shelter us from, if they chose. Teens must filter through the flood of information that comes from social media and critically comprehend what is valuable and what is not.